


kaleidoscopic

by damagecontrol



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damagecontrol/pseuds/damagecontrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>kaleidoscopic, adj.: Sometimes my fragmentation impedes, but it can also reveal; I see new patterns as the colors inside me crash and crush.</em> </p><p>In that moment they were limitless, the two of them, careening down a nameless road outside of Henrietta in a car as black as the night around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kaleidoscopic

Adam Parrish worked more hours than most boys his age. In fact, he worked more hours than ninety percent of the boys his age who were also students at Aglionby. It was the unfortunate result of not only being born in a trailer park, but being born in a trailer park to very, very poor parents.

But now Adam was, more or less, free from those things. However, he still worked more hours than most boys his age.

Tonight was one of those nights. It was almost midnight, and he was leaning on the counter in a 7-Eleven, flipping through the pages of a magazine. He really wasn't focused on anything other than the clock, which would set him free in about twenty minutes.

The bell over the door rang.

Adam looked up, smiled a fake smile at the girl who'd just slipped in and was now making her way to the beverage cases, and then returned to his magazine. It took her far too long to choose her drink.

"Hey, handsome," she said as she sidled up to the counter.

"Hello." _Nice going, Adam. Formal always gets 'em._

The girl's smile was wide and bright. Slowly she pushed the drink towards his side of the counter, deliberately running her fingers up the bottle. Adam raised an eyebrow, but he scanned the Coke and punched the necessary buttons.

"Three dollars and twenty-two cents," he said. He was trying not to stare at her too hard; it would only invite her or something else he really didn't want tonight. His gaze turned to the door, surveying the parking lot.

"What time do you get off?" the girl asked. She was taking her time finding her money, searching for two dimes and two pennies to give exact change.

A black BMW pulled into the parking lot. If "sexy" could describe a car then it described this one best, all shiny dark paint and impenetrable windows. Even though Adam couldn't _see_ who was inside, he knew. "Soon," he said. He was distracted; he didn't look away from the BMW.

The girl followed his gaze. Rolled her eyes. "Ugh, boys and their cars. It's just a BMW."

 _Just a BMW_ . Oh, but it wasn't. Not to Adam. It was _the_ BMW. The one that held so many secrets of his in one place. Some were secrets he himself didn’t know he had, but they were secrets all the same. If Adam Parrish had a secret, it was the BMW.

He turned back to the girl, irritated and impatient. He still had nine more minutes. "You can give me four dollars. It's fine."

"No, I know, I just hate all of this _change_." She said it like quarters and nickels and dimes were a disease. It was enough to rub Adam the wrong way.

Finally she found her two dimes and two pennies. She beckoned for Adam to hold out his hand, which he did because he couldn’t very well let her go without paying, and a triumphant look overshadowed her flirty expressions. She slipped the money into his upturned palm, her fingers sliding along his.

"Thanks," he muttered, punching in the numbers for her change. The cash drawer shot open.

"My name is Bethany," she said. She laid her elbows on the counter so her breasts were pushing up higher into her neck, which Adam considered a serious physical feat considering they were already up to her collarbone as it was.

"Hello," Adam mumbled. The receipt was taking forever to print, and he could hear the BMW purring outside. God, midnight was close.

Bethany batted her lashes at him. "Aren't you going to ask for my number or _something_?"

The receipt finished printing. "No," Adam said, passing it to her. "Sorry, but no."

It was as if he'd taken a pin and punctured the balloon that had become Bethany. Bethany Balloon, he decided. She huffed, grabbing her receipt and throwing her shoulders back. Another trick to emphasize her chest, he guessed. "Well, fine. Have a _shitty night_."

She turned on her heel and huffed her way out of the store. Adam was sure if the door wasn't on a spring she would have slammed it.

For another seven minutes Adam could hear the BMW – no, Adam could _feel_ it – outside the fluorescent convenient store. The BMW was something he associated with many things, but it was hard to pinpoint what exactly made it such a symbol for him. It may have been the constant shininess of it, the sleekness of its body, the promise of a rich _everything_. It was a future Adam wanted so it was only natural the BMW embodied it.

The Hondayota was the old Adam. The BMW was the future Adam.

At 11:57 George walked into the convenient store. He was on the phone with his girlfriend, babbling on about their new apartment. "I want a room with _red walls_ , Gin," he said, waving his arms around. "Not purple walls. That's gay shit. _Red_ is like...man shit, y'know?"

Adam rolled his eyes. 11:58.

"I know you like purple, but it's like you have a room and I have a room, y'know? Give me some red walls in this one." A pause. George waved to Adam, then started making his way to the back room. The last Adam heard before he disappeared was "Baby, purple isn't gonna make me want to f –"

"Ugh, gross," Adam said under his breath, images of George, a heavy-set twenty-four year old with a major video game addiction, and his longtime girlfriend Ginger, a video game designer of similar age, going at it like rabbits invading his mind.

11:59.

George emerged from the back room, phone-less this time, with the 7-Eleven’s ugly green shirt turning his tanned skin a weird, washed-out color. "'Sup, Adam?" he said as a way of greeting.

"Waiting for midnight."

"Not me, man. Waiting for six a.m." George slipped behind the counter and pulled a clipboard from the wall. "My girl wants to paint our bedroom purple. _Purple_ , man. Why the fuck do I wanna look up when I'm inside her and see _purple_? That's like...nah, man. I love her, but it's gotta be red."

Adam laughed once. "It's just a wall, G."

"But a _purple_ wall. That's gonna ruin the mood."

12:00. Adam slipped out from behind the counter and breathed a sigh of relief. He could see the BMW in the corner of his vision, a steady promise. "G, if you don't let her paint the wall purple she might not want to do _anything_ with you."

"Man, you're like sixteen. Get out." George made a shooing motion and took his spot on the stool, his head already bent over Adam’s magazine.

"I'm eighteen," Adam mumbled in reply. The back room was freezing as usual, and Adam was quick to strip off his neon green work shirt and slip into his red Coca-Cola one. He liked this one. It reminded him of Gansey and Blue and Maura and being at 300 Fox Way. Plus it looked nice on him, and he liked how it looked with black jeans.

He slipped his wallet into his back pocket and pushed open the break room. "I'm off. Thanks for getting here on time, G."

George waved at him again. "No problem. Gin's fighting with me anyway. Might as well get paid for her pissed off silence."

This time Adam laughed for real. He liked George and Ginger. They were the weird couple no one wanted to be because they were strange and dorky, but they had the relationship everyone wanted to have. "Goodnight, G. See you sometime this week."

Adam had just made it to the door, the BMW less than fifteen feet away, the promise of it thrumming in his veins. And then George said, his gaze settled on Adam, "Is that your boyfriend out there or something?"

Adam's hand froze on the door mid push. " _What?_ "

"Don't get offensive, man. I just notice that same BMW picks you up a lot. And I don't know a chick that drives a car that fucking nice. I mean, if it is a chick I hope she appreciates it." George whistled his appreciation, much like a cat call.

"Don't worry about it, George. Goodnight." Adam pushed open the door, the hot Henrietta summer air blowing in his face. The BMW was waiting for him, all black and dark and promising. Even though George's question – _is that your boyfriend or something?_ – lurked like a dark thing in the back of his mind, he couldn't resist the pull of that damn car.

Adam yanked open the passenger door. He could feel George watching from inside. When he'd settled into the cool leather of the BMW he finally turned to look at Ronan.

Ronan Lynch, as dark as his car and just as dangerous, was watching with a smile on his lips. It was not a friendly smile, though, because Ronan was never friendly and his smiles were knives or snakes or other sharp and dangerous things. "Parrish," he said by way of greeting.

"Lynch," Adam replied. He knew George was still watching, could see it out of the corner of his eye. But his gaze was on Ronan. "What's on the agenda for tonight?"

"How do you feel about street racing?" As if to emphasize his point, Ronan pressed the gas peddle down. The BMW revved, the noise a beautiful thing that made Adam's blood roar with it.

But Adam didn't let on that his heart was racing and yes, yes, _yes_ he wanted to feel the road flying beneath them and he wanted to watch the way Ronan's entire face changed when he had the BMW in his control. Instead, he said, "We always street race."

"Then what's another night?" Ronan wrapped his long fingers around the gearshift, a languid motion that was so very calculated, and put the BMW into reverse.

A slam on the gas pedal, a screech of tires, the smell of burning rubber. Adam watched George in the window of the 7-Eleven for a brief moment before Ronan was speeding through Henrietta, ignoring traffic laws and his turn signals and everything else. It didn't matter – there was never a cop in sight when they were flying through town, and Adam supposed it was the luck of Ronan Lynch. _Damn Irish_ , he thought.

Henrietta continued to fall away around them, turning from small town suburbia to rural farm country. Out here, Adam could feel the pull of Cabeswater. It was stronger with Ronan, the Greywaren, at his side.

"So who was the chick?" Ronan said it nonchalantly. He took his hand off the gearshift for a moment to switch the radio station.

"What chick?"

"The blonde bimbo. She practically put her boobs on the counter for you." He downshifted, and the BMW responded with a growl and a burst of speed. There were fast approaching 115 now, but Ronan wasn't slowing. He never did.

Adam kept his eyes on the road ahead of them. "I don't know. She was just flirting."

Ronan snorted.

"Why?"

"Just asking."

"You're never 'just asking.'"

"Tonight I am." Another downshift, another burst of speed. Ronan's face was taking on that ethereal quality that it did when he had the BMW going as fast as it would go, when he was on a straight road with nothing stopping him. Adam thought that as much as Ronan loved to race, to go from zero to sixty in seconds and dust the assholes in their hot-off-the-lot cars, he loved to be careless and free and unburdened.

Adam was beginning to think this was his favorite Ronan.

"Why are you so worried about her anyway? She just wanted in my pants, and it isn't like I said 'yeah, sure, let's do this in the back room.' She left." Adam's gaze drifted down to where Ronan's grip had tightened on the gearshift.

"It's cool, Parrish. I was just asking." But Ronan's tone suggested anything other than what his words said.

They drove in silence for a little while. Ronan continued to push the BMW, testing its limits. Occasionally it would whine, protesting against the abuse, asking to be brought back to a reasonable speed. But Ronan didn't listen, and like all of the things in Ronan Lynch's life, the BMW simply did as he asked.

The silence between them continued to stretch, but it wasn't an awkward silence that made Adam squirm. It was a comfortable silence that covered the BMW's interior like a blanket. Adam rolled his window down and slipped his hand outside. It was yanked back by the wind whipping around the car, and he laughed as he tried to keep it steady.

"Dude, my car's gonna smell like cow shit if you keep that window open," Ronan said, wrinkling his nose. He _was_ right. They were passing a dairy farm and the scent of cow was assaulting Adam's senses, but he didn't care. In that moment they were limitless, the two of them, careening down a nameless road outside of Henrietta in a car as black as the night around them.

Adam never wanted it to end.

But it did, because Ronan found a field that was empty for what seemed like miles, and he slowed the BMW until it came to rest hundreds of feet from the road. There were tire marks in the grass tracking their path, and cicadas were welcoming them as they each stepped from the car.

The hood of the BMW was warm, too warm, but Adam settled against it anyway. Ronan was at the opposite end of the car, rummaging through the trunk. After a moment he came round the front and produced two beers to Adam, each of them missing a top.

"To another night done," Ronan said, clinking the necks of their bottles together. Without waiting for Adam he tipped it back and drank.

Adam sighed. He didn't drink. "What do you mean by that?"

Ronan turned his face to the sky. "Dunno. Just sounded like something you'd say before drinking a beer with your friend." The corner of his mouth turned up. "Under the stars, too. Romantic."

Adam looked up, and the view took his breath away. Millions of stars were spread out in the night sky, another blanket over them. He smiled a full, wide smile, and then he brought the bottle to his mouth. "To another night done," he whispered around the rim before tipping it back and drinking the mildly disgusting liquid inside.

But it felt good, and he liked being here with Ronan, so he didn't comment on the flavor.

For a long while they said nothing. The night was warm but not uncomfortably so, and the world around them had fallen away to nothing but this little bubble made up of Adam, Ronan, and the BMW.

Adam looked at Ronan who was still looking up at the stars, and he wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or his own brain but he saw beauty among the sharp lines and darkness there. It was hard not to see that beauty, Adam realized, even if it was raw and angry. But Adam would never say that out loud.

But then Ronan, as if he sensed him watching, turned his head towards Adam and locked their gazes. He didn't turn away. "What?" he said instead, his voice low and husky, his expression guarded.

"Nothing," Adam mumbled, but he didn't look away.

Ronan narrowed his eyes. "You're staring."

"It's just..." Adam let out a frustrated sigh. "I like your face. I mean, it's artistic. Like, there's so much to it. Angles and shit. I don't know."

Ronan's mouth quirked at the corner, and then he was laughing. "Dude, you just told me you like my fucking face. That it's _artistic_." He was really laughing now, his head thrown back as his body shook with the tremors of it all. "That's a first, I'll tell you that."

Adam glared at him. "You don't have to be such an ass, Lynch."

"I'm sorry, it was just..." Ronan stopped laughing abruptly. He turned his gaze to Adam, his eyes narrowing. The empty bottle he was holding loosely in his fingers dropped to the ground with a dull thud.

Something in the air changed then, and Adam could feel it in the deepest parts of himself that this was a defining moment of some sort. But it wasn't until Ronan reached up to cup his face that he _knew_ something was about to change.

And then Ronan leaned in, closing the already small space that had separated them, leaving a breath's margin between them. "Why aren't you stopping me?" he asked, rubbing his thumb along Adam's cheekbone.

"I don’t know," Adam said, his voice choked and hoarse.

That was all it took for Ronan to close that last tortuous bit of space. He kissed Adam without holding back, his other hand slipping around his waist until he had pulled the other boy fully against him.

It was new for Adam, kissing Ronan. Not necessarily kissing a boy, although that was new too, because his girl-kissing experience was limited and he hadn't learned much. But Ronan's lips were soft and warm and he knew what he was doing, so Adam tried not to think too hard about the fact that this was Ronan and he was Adam and this was different.

But it was hard, and after a moment his body tensed and kissing Ronan stopped feeling like an exploration and more like something leading to another something, so he yanked himself away and stumbled back.

Ronan's hands fell to his sides, quietly banging against the nose of the BMW. His lips were red and kiss-bruised, and his blue eyes were dark and guarded. But now he was looking at Adam with confusion and Adam just wanted him to _stop looking_.

"What's wrong?" Ronan asked. He was tentative, unsure.

"I don't know," Adam whispered, more to himself than to Ronan. "I don't fucking know."

Understanding flashed across Ronan's features. "This was a mistake. I shouldn't have kissed you. "

"No, you shouldn't have." Adam's words bit into the night air, and this time there was a thing pressing them down so hard neither of the boys could breathe.

It was Ronan who broke the thick silence. "So, what, did you momentarily forget I'm not the fucking blonde from tonight?"

"No."

"Then what was it, Parrish?" Ronan took a step toward him. "You don't just _forget_ that I'm a guy. You don't just _forget_ that you like girls. Don’t fucking experiment with me."

"Stop." Adam had his head in his hands. The world was water and he was barely swimming, his body a toy in rough waters, his lungs full of something thick that made it impossible to breathe.

" _No_. I am not your substitute for Blue because you're still pissed she didn't want you." Ronan was in front of him now; Adam could see his shoes through his fingers. "You don't just switch teams because one of them makes you feel like shit."

Adam pushed at Ronan, shoving his hands into his chest. "Shut the fuck _up_ , Ronan!" he yelled into the empty night. He was shaking, his body a physical show of the mess within him.

Ronan glared down at him. "Get in the fucking car. I'm taking you home."

"No."

"No? Then, what? You just wanna sit out here for a couple more hours, chit chatting about the fucking weather, forgetting that we" – he waved his hand back and forth between them – "just _kissed_."

"No."

Ronan growled. "You need some more responses, Parrish."

"Kiss me again," Adam said, barely above a whisper.

This stopped Ronan, a freight train going as fast as it could, and his entire body froze. He looked down at Adam with confusion in his eyes. "What?"

Adam still shook despite the warm night. "Kiss me again." He said it firmer this time, louder, and it reached Ronan's ears in complete clarity. He dropped his hands from his face. "Do it. I want it."

"This isn't a fucking game," Ronan said, but he was already reaching for Adam, framing the boy's face with his hands. Their lips met in a flurry of movement. It was sloppy at first. Adam wasn't sure what to do and Ronan wasn't sure how much to give, but then Adam relaxed and Ronan silently asked of Adam to let him in, and then they were like two melded into one, becoming an infinite thing.

When Adam slipped his hands beneath Ronan's black T-shirt, all Ronan was capable of was a guttural groan. His hands slipped down Adam’s body to grip his hips. There would be bruises there, he was sure of it, but it only made him hungrier because they were marks that made Adam _his_.

And then Adam was pushing him and for a moment anger flared in Ronan's chest because _no, not again_ , but then he realized it was only to the BMW. He let Adam lay him out flat on his back, and he was sure in all of his fantasies involving Adam (of which there had been many) none of them involved being flat on the hood of his own car.

Adam kissed his lips once more before he moved to his jaw, his throat, his collarbone. He kissed until Ronan was sure he'd come undone beneath the heat of his mouth. He almost did when Adam sucked bruises to his neck and shoulder, marking him.

"That's fucking hot," Ronan whispered. Well, tried. It came out broken and hoarse, as if he hadn't used his voice in ages. "Keep going."

Ronan could feel Adam's lips twist into a smile; heat pooled in his stomach and at the base of his spine. In that moment he hated Adam as much as he loved him, this boy from a trailer park that he'd been forced into friendship with, who had made him look two, three, four times because he was gorgeous with his strange face and pensive expressions. Ronan had been okay _before_ , albeit a little angry and lost, but now it was after and Ronan was on rocky ground and it was all because of the boy who'd kissed his way down to his belt and was, with shaky fingers, undoing the buttons on his jeans.

"Parrish," he said in a choked whisper, "you don't have to do this if you don't want. I'm cool with just making out."

In response, Adam used a single finger to lift the hem of Ronan's shirt before he pressed a kiss to the sensitive skin beneath it. "But I want to."

"But _why_?" Ronan couldn't stop himself from asking. He had to know why suddenly Adam was on his knees in front of him and the world was upside-down because Adam Parrish didn't like boys. Right..?

Adam looked up at him, his gaze traveling up Ronan's body shamelessly. He didn't have a good answer for Ronan, didn't have one that made sense. He liked girls and he had liked Blue and he didn't dislike the blonde girl from 7-Eleven but he also liked Ronan and the way his body looked in the clothes he wore and the way he could paint a colorful picture with the swear words he'd string together or the way he waited in the BMW for Adam to get off of work.

But it was hard to summarize these things in an Adam-like way, and so instead he said, "Because I want you." And with steady hands he pulled at the waistband of Ronan's jeans, taking his boxers with them, until Ronan was spread on the hood of the BMW in the middle of an empty field like a man on a cross.  

Adam stared up at Ronan, this boy with sharp edges and dangerous words, and felt nothing but absolute rightness. So he bent to kiss the inside of Ronan's thigh and felt his entire body respond to the way Ronan groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes.

"Parrish," Ronan hissed through clenched teeth when Adam bit at the soft flesh of his thigh.

"No," Adam said with a harsh bite to the other thigh. "Say my name."

And if Ronan said "Parrish" in the same black way he said his curses, he whispered “Adam” like a benediction, over and over like the end of a prayer. And it _was_ divine the way Adam could pull his name from Ronan’s lips just by touching him. It was new to him and he could feel heat high on his cheeks, but there was no more thought left to be had; he’d thought enough about this moment in the darkness of his St. Agnes apartment, hot from his own dreams and sweaty from things other than the Henrietta heat.

So he kept pulling noises from Ronan with his mouth, cradling his hips with his hands, digging his fingers in hard enough to bruise, until Ronan was pulling at his hair and rasping out, “Come up, Adam. Stop.”

Adam let him go and stepped back to see his work spread out on the hood of that beautiful black car. Ronan’s arm was still thrown over his eyes and his mouth was open as he breathed, harsh and fast. His cheeks were tinged a very un-Ronan-like pink.

"God, look at you," Adam whispered. He reached out to intertwine his fingers with Ronan’s. "I wish you could look at you."

Ronan lips turned into a rueful smile. "The narcissist in me thanks you."

Adam pulled at their intertwined hands, an urgency to his action. He didn't speak, but his body curved into Ronan where they leaned against the BMW, using it to support their bodies. "Let's get in the car," Adam whispered with shaky breaths; Ronan was kissing along his neck, leaving a trail of heat in his wake.

"Sounds cramped. A bit sexy, but definitely cramped."

"I don't care. Let's do it."

"There's a fine line between asking and demanding, Parrish," Ronan said, nipping into the soft skin at Adam's jugular. "You're straddling it." He smiled again, and Adam could feel it against his hot skin. "Unless that's what you want to do to _me_."

A whine escaped Adam's throat. He knew it sounded pathetic but in this abandoned field hours away from the rest of the world, he didn't care. He only cared about the way Ronan was touching him with exploratory hands, and that Ronan was still such a foreign thing. Adam wanted to know all of him, all of the peaks and valleys and sharp edges and shadows that were Ronan Lynch.

But he really didn’t want to do it in the middle of an open field, so he slipped down and pulled Ronan’s pants up to his hips, gently kissing the soft skin above where his waistband came to rest. He pulled at him then, urging him toward the side of the BMW.

The inside of the car was warm, the Henrietta night already blanketing the interior in humidity and heat. And when Ronan laid Adam along the backseat, carefully maneuvering their bodies as they helped one another strip from their clothes, the limo-tinted windows fogged and Adam made a joke about being in the Titanic movie.

"Shut up," Ronan whispered, gripping Adam's hips until Adam gasped into his neck. They were bare and sweating and the car was too hot, but all of it was irrelevant and everything was skin and heat and exploration.

"I don't know what the fuck has happened to me," Adam said, burying his face in Ronan’s shoulder. "It's like I don't even remember how I got to this point."

"You talk too much," Ronan said. He kissed Adam then, chasing his words in an attempt to stop them.

But it didn't work, because Ronan couldn't kiss Adam forever unless he wanted to stop breathing; he dipped his head to kiss elsewhere. Adam said, "But I've been thinking about this for awhile and I don't know why it took me – _us_  – this long," and as he said it he wrapped his legs around Ronan's waist and let his body respond to the touches and kisses in the only way it knew how.

"Stop. Talking." Ronan said it with kisses in-between, trying to silence the boy beneath him who was lost in his thoughts. He was terrified of Adam waking up, that he would realize it was all a mistake and that this was just a freak accident, that he didn’t really want _Ronan_ –

" _Shit_ ," Ronan hissed, his arms shaking where they framed Adam, trapping him in a corner of the BMW's backseat. Adam had angled himself just right and rubbed against Ronan, sending heat through both of their spines.

Adam's grin was manic, and Ronan couldn’t slow his breathing. He didn’t stand a chance, either – Adam was pushing him back against the seat, leaning over his thighs, straddling him. And oh, it was so, _so_ good when Adam’s hips stuttered forward; Ronan threw his head back, so close to obliteration.

"Power play is your thing, isn't it, Parrish?" Ronan said, leaning to meet Adam's smiling mouth. His arms were wrapped around the other boy, holding them together. It was hot and they were sweating and it felt like the air was too thick to breath, but Ronan had stopped caring and everything was the feel of Adam on top of him and against him.

"Do you..." Adam stopped when Ronan moved his hips just right, the world momentarily forgotten in a burst of _yes, yes, yes_ , but then he regained his thoughts and said into Ronan's shoulder, "Do you have anything?"

Ronan raised his brow and pulled back to look at Adam. "Are you sure? All in one night?"

Adam's pupils were blown wide, but Ronan could still see bits of uncertainty behind heady desire. "I thought that's how it went..."

Ronan barked out a laugh; it was hoarse from an unused – or overused – voice. "There are more ways to get off than that, Adam."

A snarl slipped out of Adam's throat, something low and predatory that could have put Ronan over the edge if he wasn't forcing himself to hold back. But it was hard with Adam suddenly kissing him, furiously and with purpose. One of Adam’s hands searched for Ronan’s, intertwining their fingers, and the other was gripping the back of Ronan’s head, holding them together while simultaneously running over the shortly cropped hair Adam had always been curious to touch.

Ronan’s hands had a mind of their own, and while he kept one firmly gripping Adam’s hips, he broke away from kissing Adam long enough to bring his other hand up to his mouth and sloppily lick his palm.

“Jesus, Ronan,” Adam whispered, watching with hooded eyes.

“Same difference,” Ronan said with a wicked grin before he slipped his hand down to grip them together. He pulled up in one smooth motion, and Adam was lost. Their quiet breathing filled the small space in the BMW, their breaths mixing together as they kissed.

And then Ronan wasn't in control anymore and "Adam" was all he could say and the black interior of the BMW became white white white and his body was a shivering thing in the heat of the car. Adam followed him then, his teeth biting Ronan's shoulder so savagely he was sure there would be marks there for weeks.

Their breathing was ragged and uneven, but after a few minutes it slowed and aligned. Adam pressed his forehead into Ronan's neck. The heat in the car was smothering, the windows entirely fogged and impossible to see out of.

"That was the hottest thing I have _ever_ done," Ronan said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"No pun intended," Adam muttered. They were sweaty and sticky and Adam had never wanted a shower as much as he did right then. "I don’t think I’ve ever been this god damn sweaty.”

Ronan grunted in response and started searching for the BMW's keys, which he hoped were in some pocket of his jeans. “Thank God,” he said when he heard them jingle together. He handed them to Adam. "Start 'er up."

It took a few minutes for the air conditioning to kick in, but once it did they both sighed in relief. They cleaned themselves off as best as they could, but sweat still coated their bodies. Adam was sure the car reeked with it.

"Don't leave me after this," Ronan said suddenly, quietly, as if he didn’t really want Adam to hear. The car had been silent except for the whir of the air conditioning.

Adam turned to look at him. They had untangled their bodies to cool, but Adam's fingers still itched to intertwine with Ronan's. All of him did, really. "What do you mean?" he asked. He had decided this was a very un-Ronan-like moment, and he wasn’t sure where to tread.

“I just…you could leave. We got to this point and anything could happen and you could decide you don’t want this and just…leave.”

"I'm not going anywhere," Adam said. He reached out for Ronan’s hand, loosely gripping his fingers.

"But for all of our time as friends I've thought you like girls and now I'm confused and don't know what to do," Ronan said. He gripped Adam's fingers as though they were a lifeline.

Adam snorted. "If you think _you're_ confused, try being me. I had sex with Ronan Lynch before I got past first base with a girl." He laughed again and shook his head. "I'm very confused."

A very Ronan-like expression overtook Ronan's face. It was one of mischief and secrets and things Adam admittedly wanted to know. "Maybe I'm the Adam Parrish anomaly."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"Tonight, I am a narcissist." He turned to Adam with a wicked grin. "Tomorrow, I think I’d like to be yours."

The sound of it made Adam's heart race, and the blood in his veins was boiling in the now chilled air of the BMW. He ran his hand along the leather backseat. He realized in that moment that the BMW held yet another one of his secrets, but this time it was a Ronan-type secret that would begin to infiltrate his life, from this point forward.

And Adam wanted it. He wanted _all_ of it.

"Are we going to tell Gansey?" Ronan asked. His eyes were drifting closed, his voice growing tired.

"If you want."

"I think I’d like to. When you’re ready.”

“I’d like that.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, his voice softening as he succumbed to sleep. “I’d like that too.”

* * *

It took Gansey a week to figure out what was happening with his two best friends. Adam blamed it on Ronan's inability to stop touching him, even if it was just their knees. Ronan blamed it on Adam's constant staring, which was far too obvious and blatantly admiring.

Blue said they were both idiots, and that she'd predicted this for months.

"You have no _actual_ psychic powers, Jane," Gansey pointed out the day they'd pieced it all together. "You can't honestly say you knew."

"Look at them, Gansey," she said, pointing back and forth between Ronan, whose arm was thrown over the back of the couch in Monmouth, and Adam, who was sitting close enough for Ronan's hand to rest on his shoulder. "They're like magnets. Even I can see that."

And Blue was right in her strange way of being so, because Adam never strayed far from Ronan and Ronan never strayed far from Adam. They were bound by a forest and three other friends and a magic they didn't understand. But there was far more to it than that; they both knew it, but they never said it in the company of Gansey and Blue. They whispered it into the other's skin at night when the world was dark and belonged to them, just like it had that first night on the edges of Henrietta beneath a blanket of stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and title description taken from David Levithan's tweet [here](https://twitter.com/loversdiction/status/556496231296282624).
> 
> I've written a lot of Pynch fic recently but this is the first I've wanted to post. Hope you all enjoyed. ♥


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